


prayers on fire

by myshelovka



Category: Bad Blood For The Vampyr (Film), Blixa Bargeld (Musician), Einstürzende Neubauten, Nick Cave and the Bad Seeds, Rowland S Howard (Musician), The Birthday Party (Band), These Immortal Souls (Band)
Genre: Animal Transformation, Catholicism, Enemies to lovers kind of, Human/Vampire Relationship, Inaccurate Catholicism, Love Triangle, M/M, Priest Blixa Bargeld, Strangers to Lovers, Teeth, Vampire AU, Vampire Rat, Vampire Rowland S Howard, ein bißchen deutsch, homoerotic tension, rampant bisexuality
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2019-10-29
Updated: 2019-10-30
Packaged: 2021-01-07 21:23:50
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 2
Words: 4,394
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/21224432
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/myshelovka/pseuds/myshelovka
Summary: rowland howard is a gentle vampire who just wants a peaceful meal, but his prey christian emmerich, a young priest who seldom sleeps, is an absolute madman. tonight is going to be completely unforgettable.(my first serious work. i hope you all enjoy i it.hint: do you really think i’d ever actually write something serious?)





	1. say a spell

**Author's Note:**

  * For [Anne Rice](https://archiveofourown.org/gifts?recipient=Anne+Rice).

> disclaimers: heavy use of artistic license on history, setting, and characterization. i don’t know any of these people personally enough to write them flawlessly, i have never been to berlin, i wasn’t even a thought in the 80s. blixa being religious and academically successful enough to be a young priest, let alone him being religious in the first place is highly unrealistic for many reasons (the things I do to preserve bbftv blixa’s clerical charm!) especially considering how prevalent punk was at this time and how ‘punk’ blixa’s outlook and personality is/was. blixa goes by christian a lot initially. there’s no neubauten band and the birthday party (plus gen, anita, and harry) is a band of traveling vampires as opposed to a musical type of band.  
this is all a fantasy i made up for fun and because there’s no decent, rape-free abuse-free rowland+blixa fics and there’s something about that scene in bad blood for the vampyr where priest blixa gets drained by the vampyr that’s.../very/ inspiring.

Few people believe vampires exist beyond fiction, and even fewer believed themselves to have seen one in person, but this particular priest had shared cigarettes with one.

It had been a good three-or-so hours since the Mass had ended. He still hadn’t quite gone back home, let alone changed out of his cassock. Christian was content to amble about the old churchyard with a pack of Marlboros. It had become a questionable nocturnal ritual for the often sleepless priest. The night had a pleasant chill, and the solitude allowed one ample room to think and smoke.

Well, the solitude did allow one ample room to think until he heard leaves crunching and turned to see a thin, pallid figure walking towards him. At least the company just gave the churchyard more room to smoke, if one could put it optimistically. Christian allowed his pale blue eyes to flicker over the moonlit man before him. He had black hair that was even more unkempt than his own, which he had almost thought impossible. He was built like an architectural disaster in a way that was striking as opposed to horrifying, falling into that magnetic somewhere between attractive and repulsive. As he stood next to Christian he looked him dead in the eyes but didn’t say anything, and he was conflicted between continuing to gawk at this already enigmatic stranger or asking his name, so he held out the pack of cigarettes.

“Zigarette?” he offered.

“Bitte,” the stranger responded and took one graciously, added a “danke,” asChristian took out a new one and placed it into his own mouth. Before he could reach for something to light up with the other man had reached into his pockets and pulled out a match, striking it against the bricks. He watched how the flames from the match lit up his face and cast shadows on the contours of his round cheekbones, and as he leaned in towards Christian’s face to light their cigarettes he couldn’t help but look into his reddish-brown eyes. Christian was never the type to stare at someone like that beyond quick and necessary assessments, so this entire experience was a bit surreal for him and it had to have been a bit unsettling for the other man, yet he seemed - or pretended - not to notice him. He was beyond visually striking, this fellow was visually arresting.

Something about the closeness of their faces gave him the impression of intimacy, which faded as they pulled away and the man shook the match out. They stood there in silence amidst the graves and smoked. He thought of something to ask, to stave curiosity.

Despite desiring a name of some kind to call the one before him, he tiptoed around the subject of names, for the subject of his own was uncomfortable. He chose to ask why the man was there, but as the words poured out of his mouth and he saw the confusion in his expression he had already clocked him for an Ausländer

“_Where are you from_?” Slowly, clearly, with a head tilt as he held the cigarette between his fingers. The stranger’s lips curled into a mischevious smile.

“_I come from Hell_.” the man’s accent was noticeable, but due to his ears’ unfamiliarity with such sounds it couldn’t be quite placed. _He can probably come up with better jokes in his mother tongue,_ Christian thought as he looked back at him neutrally. He was unimpressed with the cheap attempt at shock, and then he returned a smile not so much intended for the stranger but as part of his own mimicry of the stranger.

To Christian, holiness did not equal humorless, and he shot back “_So am I. It’s always pleasant to meet another compatriot,_” Although most of the words weren’t understood there was enough from what the young man could gather from context to make him chuckle - not for the response itself, Christian imagined, but for the irony of a holy man claiming to be from hell.

The stranger stubbed his cigarette into the same brick he struck the match. Then the black-haired man turned to him and stepped closer to him, placing two frigid hands on Christian’s black-clad shoulders. Christian looked up at him and his eyes had seemingly brightened into a ruby-red, and he was pushing him up against a tree and keeping perfect eye contact with him. Christian knew exactly what this stranger was, and his heart had gone from steady beating to pounding and he tried to push him away, to pull away, but he could almost physically feel the energy drained from his limbs with each movement.

Everyone knew vampires are dangerous - but no creature under the sun is unstoppable. Especially not one so akin to man, the ficklest of them all. Amid the dread filling every inch of his body he held onto one beam of _confidence_, not in the Lord’s plans, but his own.

The vampire’s memorized phrases slash promises of “_I won’t kill you, I won’t change you, stand still,_” weren’t too soothing, but he stood still and kept eye-contact. There was a ringing in his mind that got louder the longer he looked. Hypnosis. This thing was trying to hypnotize him, with it’s steady gaze and repetition of ‘_stillstehen, stillstehen,_‘, and it wasn’t working not so much because its power was weak, but because his own will was too strong.

He was pressed between the pale figure and the rough bark of the tree, and the vampire reached out for his cassock’s collar and tugged at the cloth as he looked for a way to create an opening.

He kept his eyes open and face fixed in his attempt to seem as though the hypnotism ‘worked’, although it barely did. He felt its breath on his skin and there was a grim realization that this was the most physical contact Christian had received all week. He was no stranger to doing questionable things to provoke a reaction, and to the surprise of the bloodsucker-to-be, its‘hypnotized’ prey raised his hands - and promptly jabbed his thumbs inside the vampire’s mouth and against its cheeks.

“Zeig mir deine Zähne! Zeig mir deine Zähne!” he shrieked with a taunting lilt to his voice as the vampire lost his grip and went tumbling to the ground below, with Christian following and still trying to pry open his cheeks with his bare hands. It was kind of kinky, come to think of it. The vampire still screamed anyways. Christian took his hands out of its mouth and placed them around his cool throat, which really didn’t help the subtext.  
_“I’m not in the mood to take part in real life vampire erotica right now, gay boy!”_ yelled Christian directly into one of its’ ruby red eyeballs as he strangled it. It wasn’t as though it could understand, but it made Christian feel better.

  
Suddenly, he picked it up by its throat and slung it into a tree. It rolled around in the dirt and disappeared into a black dirt cloud, leaving behind only the crackling of leaves beneath the scurrying paws of a pitch black mouse. It made its way for the nearest brick wall, and for a moment as it faltered on the bricks and he looked right back at Christian with those same ruby-red eyes. Either to scrutinize him or to confirm that this man existed and he hadn’t gone crazy, Christian wasn’t sure. Christian made himself smile at it in a way he wasn’t quite sure was unsettling or endearing - either would be fine - and then he pulled out an AK-47 and shot at it and the creature frantically scuttled off.

Once it was gone, Christian put his gun away and got on down on all four, and so he scuttled away too.

Evidentially, he mused on his way home after he had been hit by at least 13 cars who mistook him for a wild doe, he had been frightened one of those most frightening creatures one could come across, and on one hand he felt a touch of pride, but on the other he felt a deep pit of disappointment in his chest. He imagined tonight’s prayer would be him imploring his guardian angel to protect him against wicked creatures in the night. Yet he irrationally, foolishly, selfishly hoped that he may encounter this particular creature again. Life simply isn’t enjoyable when it’s safe.  
As he walked into his room, he at least found amusement in knowing not all vampires can transform into _vampirfledermäuse_: some merely transform into _vampirmäuse_.

=to be continued=>


	2. stranger than kindness

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> ohhh shit there’s a rat oh fuck there’s a motherfuckin rat in my house ahhh shit i gotta call pest control and get this rat out of my house oh yeah gotta call pest control. or maybe i’ll just let it stay 😳

What had been a thrilling encounter for the mortal had been one of the most embarrassing nights of his life to the vampire.

From the moment he left the flat Rowland had not known peace, and he hoped he would feel better once he got back - but such a notion had been tied to a grenade and thrown off a roof within the hour of his return. He had been the earliest return, and he was sitting in their living room attempting to read one of his Anne Rice books. There still remained the ‘ghost’ of the man’s fingers around his throat and the flavor of a Marlboro and a holy man’s hands stuck in his mouth. 

The door opened and he looked up and heard Gen (one of the few remaining backbones of his existence) walk in and she looked almost completely lifelike and glowing from the blood she had consumed, contrasting with his own dead appearance. As their eyes made contact they were both hit by a barrage of emotions that although their own were still intertwined. 

Rowland was on the verge of being mortified from his embarrassment and newfound anxiety that he’d have to explain his sorry state, Gen’s initial pride at accomplishing her first hunt alone since they first arrived in the city had been dampened with worry of why her most cherished friend looked like he was either going to collapse from blood-starvation or have some type of nervous breakdown.

“You haven’t eaten?” Rowland knew that wasn’t a question, but her expression of shock.

“Not at all,” his heart no longer beat but if it did he’d be having palpitations. He felt he looked like a fool who couldn’t even get a drop out of some scrawny, solitary, nearly-nocturnal Catholic who’d he’d cased for at least three nights prior. 

Maybe it was too good to be true, or maybe his luck had run out at the most pivotal moment. It already kind of hurt when the man didn’t quite laugh at his joke but it drove Rowland’s remaining confidence and dignity through the noose when he had to run away in the form of a _mouse_, of all the secondary forms he could have gotten to inhabit when he was turned, the only unique power he had being almost completely ineffective, and on top of it all he had been so easily man-handled by the clergyman. Things like this are what fed his fantasies of one day opening the curtains on a sunny afternoon.

He had further decimated his pride and told the story to Gen, because frankly he could tell just about anything no matter how shameful to Gen, and he went into detail of how he followed this sad stick of a fellow around for those three nights, how everything from the amount time he spent alone during Rowland’s “business hours”, whether he was at home doing god-knows-what or wandering around courtyards and churchyards - _the_ churchyard, or how easy he was to approach and eventually overpower had made him seem like the perfect target. 

He told her about how he was able to just walk up to him, smoke with him, and make small talk and the one shock-joke he didn’t really react to (only smiled) like it was nothing, and how it seemed like the mortal was perpetually sizing him up, or admiring him (“well, you are good-looking”, jokes Gen in a way that Rowland doesn’t find comforting). 

Then, Rowland vented about those final moments that had sent him over the edge, how he thought he had hypnotized him and how it didn’t seem any different from anyone else and then how he just shoved his hands in his mouth and strangled him and threw him around like that and how he had no choice but to run away and how he still had that bizarre smile he gave him on his way out and the sound of gunshots etched in his mind and he felt the man saying he was also from hell wasn’t entirely a joke. 

When he finished it was just his luck that he saw the hog-nosed vampire Nick standing in the doorway watching them with a smug expression, and he could have disintegrated when he realized everyone else had returned by now and had definitely heard them.

To drive the final nail in his shame-coffin, Gen made him feed off almost the whole stash of mice they kept on hand for emergencies to stave his hunger off until tomorrow night. 

A whole week had passed since that night and Nick still called him “Rat-Boy”, and he occasionally received comments from Mick, Tracy, and even Anita about his new fear of clergymen.

He had hoped to every force, known and unknown, in this universe that he would not encounter this man again, or at least to never end up taking another Marlboro from another blue-eyed Catholic.

At least Rowland’s night had been going well as he was able to drink enough blood to make him warm and less corpselike without a hitch - up until the moment he had quite literally become a rat in a bag. Earlier he had been weaving through the remnants of a relatively colorful night, and he had no time to stand about and take in the subtleties of the streets and their strangers when he had about twenty till sunrise. Not a word was to be ascribed to any confusing scent, sight, or sound until he had long left its radius. He was far from being acquainted with West Berlin and her every scar and crevice, and none of the roads or buildings looked familiar enough for him to even guess where he was, let alone the flat. 

Every passing minute made him feel as though he had another thorn in his heart, and as he walked further into the city’s labyrinth he searched for anything that looked promising, but primarily found himself trailing any vaguely familiar scent - zeroing in on one that was vaguely smokey, not unlike Nick’s - loathsome as he could be, it would be a delight to see someone he knew. Someone who could lead him back to safety.

He knew he couldn’t just hitch onto someone’s clothing as a mouse (too noticeable), or cram himself in a a dumpster, as that would be too uncomfortable on both physical and olfactory levels. He could always just stand there and wait for the sun to burn him to ash, but that was more of a last resort for truly desperate or apathetic measures - and he was getting desperate as his adrenaline was starting to overtake his reason. 

There was an irony in his panicked search though, as the more he tried to look for details, the more he ignored them.

The scent had become more defined as he spotted an inattentive someone with a bag sitting at a bus-stop. Rowland shifted back down to the form of a mouse as he approached, crawled up onto the bench, and slid into the bag without being noticed. He had glanced at the man by the bag a few times as he planned each movement, and in combination with the scent it was close to impossible to deny the identity, yet found himself thinking it simply couldn’t be. 

No matter how the scent merged into recognized notes of cigarette smoke, the musk of burning incense, and a slight sickly-sweetness of rotten fruit.

He thought that if he were to somehow die from this unthought-out plan then he _deserved_ it, as he tried to get comfortable among what felt like books and a scarf. 

He truly felt like he was a world-class dunce with a brain that may as well be made of chicken and couscous as he slid beneath the scarf which carried the scent of someone else. It was too late and too risky for him to suddenly jump out, in terms of time and position. The anxiety from the sunlight subsided, and as he heard the motor of an approaching bus and felt the stirring of the fellow next to the bag, it was instead replaced with anxiety for what might await him. 

Only ten minutes at most had passed, one could have told Rowland he’d been taken to Hamburg and he wouldn’t doubt them with how slowly time seemed to pass from within the bag. He remembered that this wasn’t the strangest hiding place he had taken, old mailboxes and pipes considered, but he had something akin to a phantom pain, a ‘phantom sensation’, of his heart pounding the moment he heard the a doorknob being turned and the creak of the door as it opened and his carrier stepped into what was presumably his home and shuffled off his shoes. He felt the bag being put down, and listened to the clicking of lights as the sound of footsteps went further and further away. Another door opened, but didn’t shut. He came out from beneath the cloth and made his way halfway out of the bag, peering over the edge at his surroundings.

Whoever had decorated this room had tried in vain to keep things monochromatic and to keep his belongings minimal, but trinkets and knick-knacks and books and clothing and weapons and scrap metal in varying stages of remembrance cluttered the bones of this darkened skeleton, contradicting (if not destroying) the originally intended impression of a modest and tidy abode. He felt a certain urging, a compulsion that slid into the depths of anxiety, to count out each of these things - but he had to ignore them. One of the many cons of his condition.

Rowland figured he could probably hide in some clutter pile or closet, and he was teetering over the edge when the footsteps trailed back - when a voice, that deep voice, spoke out a half-annoyed half-amused but certainly tired “Wieder?” that sent Rowland tumbling over the edge and onto the floor and back into the form of a man, effectively destroying any chance of quietly and discreetly staying ‘overlight’. 

“Jesus fuckin’ Christ!” he exclaimed on impulse, and the dressed-down man crossed his bony arms and looked down on him with those uncomfortably piercing blue eyes.

“There’s no Christ here, I’m afraid there is only me,” he spoke in fluent but heavily accented English and Rowland went as stiff as a corpse as he moved in closer.

“Are you here for vengeance?” 

“No!” sputtered Rowland as he pushed himself away from him, “I was in a hurry, I wasn’t intending to-” The man was reaching for something, Rowland cut away his explanation and went straight into “I’m not trying to hurt you, I just want to stay out of the sun, I’m just as displeased as you are about this arrangement -“ His hand faltered for a moment, and then he reached into his pocket and pulled out an entire rifle with a bayonet - since when did clergymen carry about bayonets? - he might have asked if the bayonet in question wasn’t pointed at him.

“How can I be confident you are not going to drain me and my testicles when I least expect it?” Rowland’s vampiric senses allowed him to literally smell the acrid fear coming off of the German, and he would be lying if he said the fear wasn’t mutual. This, to Rowland, was perhaps the most admirable and intimidating thing about the man. He felt fear, but he always acted in spite of it.

“There’d be no room for your blood in me even if I wanted it,” Rowland got back onto his feet and stood upright, but kept good distance between him and the one pointing the bayonet. 

“And who had you have to kill for it?” he cocked his head slightly and stepped closer.

“Nobody died. I’m not a killer,” Rowland was dead-still and only half-composed.

“I wouldn’t have even killed you that night, nor would I have wanted to, I would have just taken a little and left you alone if you hadn’t...” 

“Done this?” He shot Rowland several times, reloaded, and shot again. Then he bayonetted him at least twice and ignored Rowland’s cries of pain, It wasn’t as shocking to Rowland as it was last time, but it still hurt. There was something akin to a sadistic spark in the priests’ blue eyes, and he withdrew the bayonet, but he wasn’t fully letting his guard down yet. He gazed at Rowland in silence, and he had the feeling he was being assessed again.

“Do you believe everything happens for a reason?” he asked, and to Rowland it didn’t feel like a question made out of genuine curiosity but one made to divulge his own beliefs.

“Not particularly. I don’t see much of a point in trying to read into blank pages, if that makes any sense.” He winced as he spoke and as his meal was absorbed into his body to help forcefully mend his flesh back together.

“Blank pages, huh?” he murmured this and looks away monetarily, and looked back at Rowland, “I think you’re here for a reason, and perhaps only God himself knows what that reason is,”

“Had better be a good one,” Rowland muttered and hacked up a bit of tar black “blood” and bullets. The brown-haired man glared at him for a moment, and then softened somewhat - not in a way that made Rowland feel as though he was being sympathized with but considered to be a little less deserving of scorn.

“Go take off your shoes.” his words were as firm as his grip on the rifle.

“So you’re letting me stay here just after you shoot and stab me... because you think your God might have put me in your bag?” Rowland didn’t expect much of a response as he took off his boots and placed them by the door next to the gleaming black leather shoes of his host.

“You could be more grateful, after all, I could have left you to burn, or bayonetted your chest,” he chides as he puts away his rifle and goes to pull the curtains of each window shut, and Rowland supposed he was right.

A few moments had passed, with the holy man slipping into his room after closing almost every curtain around the house, and Rowland trailed him and leaned in the doorway of his bedroom. He watched him as he stood before his mirror and unbuttoned more of the buttons on his white shirt, and his red eyes burned into the back of his light brown hair.

“Hey,” Rowland’s vision met his as he turned to him, letting out some sort of “hm?” in acknowledgement.

“Could you tell me your name?”

“Could you tell me _yours_?” He was immediately deflecting, and the vampire didn’t see the point in making this any more difficult.

“Rowland.” 

“Well, Rowland,” the way he said his name sounded like the verbal equivalent of someone tasting a new wine and he seemed either pleased or uncomfortable with every sound and syllable, from his inadvertent trilling of the R to how his tongue tapped out the L just above his front teeth, “my given name is Christian.” Christian seemed almost displeased at saying his own name, a name which Rowland found to be ridiculously ironic. Christian kept looking at him and Rowland couldn’t keep his gaze on his as his eyes kept drifting to the silver cross pendant resting on his chest, visible through the opening in the shirt. He would flick his gaze back up, never allowing it to linger on it for too long.

“How much longer will you be awake?” his voice was stern and snapped Rowland out of his gay-gawking.

“2 minutes, probably,”

“Sounds like someone isn’t going to survive the winter,” Christian tsked and turned back to the mirror and resumed undressing despite his audience of one.

“Uh, ok,” Rowland may or may have not took a tad too much interest in how the dress-shirt slid off of his shoulders, and the way the light from the ceiling cast slight shadows on his back. His jaws tingled and he felt like he was getting closer to vomiting the longer he looked. Yet something about the idea of vomiting blood all over his attacker slash host seemed appealing.

“How would you feel if I kept staring at your body while you were trying to get undressed for bed? That’s quite strange, isn’t it?” he looked in the mirror right at where Rowland should have been, and Rowland pulled away his eyes from his shoulder-blades in silence, and then Christian glanced at Rowland from over his shoulder.

“Do me a favor and at least try to wake me up by nine so I don’t miss church - that would be really awkward for the congregation, and don’t exploit my kindness or burn down my home while I’m asleep, okay? Goodni-”

“Morning,” Rowland was certain he heard Christian mutter something that he was certain was the German equivalent of “smart-ass”, “I’ll try to, uh, behave,” he added and he shut the door. Not long after Rowland heard murmurs of a prayer and the light in the bedroom went out.

Rowland had the house of a near-stranger to himself and only three explicit responsibilities, and he could have done just about anything as long as it didn’t involve arson, exploitation, or allowing Christian to sleep for more than four hours. Yet, the first thing he did was pick up a random gun and place it back on the gun rack where it ostensibly belonged, and then he reached for another.

There was the least he could do, but it never hurt to do just a little more - and hey, at least he could soothe his counting compulsion as he did so.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> my crackfic style is very different this time. i don’t know how to feel about that.

**Author's Note:**

> fuck the government fuck the troops fuck ao3 fuck cops fuck jennieblackheart fuck you and your family too i’ll never write something serious never bend to the demands of this site i will forever pollute it i throw trash and cum stained pissrags on the hard work of everyone else here i am a disgrace to this community and i’m proud. i’m like jesus and satan and jennieblackheart and satan and christ and jesus and satwn and satan and jesus and but i don’t believe in this kind of idolatry and i don’t believe in satan or jesus or jennieblackheart aye for i am only an overgrown child who eats mice and deceives. love wins!


End file.
